NEW ORLEANS -

This idea, Cox Automotive president Sandy Schwartz acknowledges, might not sound particularly “sexy” when you’re talking about innovation in the auto business.

But it sure is practical.

In an interview around the NADA Convention and Expo in late January, Schwartz said that Cox Automotive’s focus on the innovation front in 2017 is this: “Integration is innovation.”

Now, he wasn’t saying the company won’t buy or build anything this year.

“But we think that the best innovation we can do for our dealers, OEMs and everyone this year is to integrate our companies,” Schwartz said. “And we’re doing that. And I think we’re doing it really well. But that is what our road map is.”

For instance, a single sign-on — one login, one password — for dealers to the various Cox Automotive products.  May sound simple, but it can sure make life easier for dealerships, many who might use some or all of the various platforms throughout Cox Automotive’s Financial Solutions, Inventory Solutions, Media Solutions and Retail Solutions groups. 

A quick view on the “Brands & Solutions” tab on Cox Automotive’s website shows more than two dozen entities throughout the globe.

The news around Cox Automotive for much of the past few years has been the purchases it has made, many of which now fill the slots on that page. These days, it’s about integrating those products that touch seemingly every aspect of the car-buying process.

“It’s about taking all these products that we have, in the best way we can for dealers, for remarketers, for lenders, for all the captives, for the OEMs, really make them work so that the dealership experience, the car-buying experience — all the way through; wholesale and retail — we get the friction out of it,” Schwartz said.  “And we help dealers do that.”

Integration from within divisions

And part of the integration process of connecting all the tentacles of Cox Automotive is for the various entities themselves to work from the inside out.

“One of the things we are all trying to do in our solutions groups is that, in many cases, before we get connected across those groups — wholesale to retail and so forth — we need to get connected inside our own groups,” Janet Barnard, the president of Cox Automotive Inventory Solutions Group, said in an interview here at NADA. “So, for example, to have I’ll call it an ‘easy button’  for logistics or inspections or other services that we have that show up everywhere you might buy or sell a car, whether that’s on our own platforms or competitor platforms.

“Because, of course, we’re in a number of industry-agnostic businesses  now, where it doesn’t necessarily matter if you buy and sell at our auctions, we’ll move a car if you buy and sell somewhere else,” she said. 

“So, that’s where a lot of us are starting to create innovation through integration,” Barnard said. “Where we just take those pain points, like transportation, and make it easy to order and easy to check on tracking fulfilment, if you buy or sell a car at Manheim, for example.”

She added:  “And then across the groups, a great example is really our co-development partnership with the Retail Solutions Group for Stockwave last year. And our teams are really closely connected on helping our clients understand how to be better buyers, so they can grow their business.”

At NADA, Auto Remarketing also sat down with Derek Hansen, who is the vice president of Digital Inventory Solutions for Manheim, and Brett Woods, the senior director of DealShield. The collaboration between their companies is an example of this integration at work.

“We’re continually looking to drive trust and transparency into the transaction, and drive digital growth on the auction side,” Hansen said. “And one of the ways we’ve been able to do that this year is, we’re in a pilot mode on bringing more trust in the cars that are purchased digitally. And we’re partnering with a business that brings trust to the marketplace in DealShield. So we’re piloting opportunities where if a car qualifies, you can put a complimentary DealShield on that vehicle and drive trust in that transaction, and continue to bring dealers into that environment.”

Over at DealShield, Woods discussed a partnership with the Ready Logistics brand called “Ready. Set. Pause.,” where the buyer using DealShield can “pause” the 21-day return guarantee period provided by DealShield while the vehicle is being transported by Ready.

Incubating innovation

Interestingly enough, DealShield and Ready Logistics have both gone through Cox Automotive’s incubator program (Ready Logistics after it was purchased), which has also included projects like Make My Deal.

There is also the Cox Innovation Fund, a joint fund started by parent company Cox Enterprises and board member and serial entrepreneur Tripp Rackley.  The second product that has come out of that is Clutch, a vehicle subscription service that allows users to “flip” the vehicle at any time.

What Cox Automotive learns from these ventures gives it an opportunity to do a bit of test-learning on what the future auto environment might look like.

So for something like autonomous cars, Schwartz, like any of us, said he can’t gaze into the crystal ball and tell you when they will take over the market.  But the point is, Cox Automotive looks to figure out what its role would be in that type of landscape.

“What we want is, we want to understand where this fleet’s going to go at night. What role do we play into them? How much reconditioning can we do?” Schwartz said. “How can we help dealers? Are they still going to have to be titled? I feel fortunate that I work for a company that’s willing to invest in those areas.”